A protest video from Bangladesh is shared as showing atrocities against students for wearing Indian clothes
A video showing a man being held down and his hair being forcibly cut is going viral on social media (here, here, here, and here). The post is being shared with claims that it shows rising atrocities against students in Bangladesh for wearing Indian clothes and not keeping beards. Let’s verify the claim made in the post in this article.
Claim: The video shows atrocities against students in Bangladesh for wearing Indian clothes and not keeping beards.
Fact: The video does not show atrocities against students in Bangladesh for wearing Indian clothes and not keeping beards. It actually shows a symbolic protest held in Mymensingh, Bangladesh, where cultural activists recreated a recent incident of forcible hair cutting to condemn attacks on shrine culture and artists. The protest followed an earlier case in which a Fakir had his hair and beard forcibly cut before Eid al-Adha. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
A reverse image search of keyframes from the viral video led to a Facebook post dated 26 September 2025 by Prothom Alo English, a Bangladesh-based media outlet, which featured screenshots from the same video and linked to a related report. According to the report, cultural activists in Mymensingh staged a symbolic protest along the Brahmaputra riverside against recent incidents of forcible hair cutting during a memorial programme for late artiste Farida Parveen, where organiser Shamim Ashraf had his hair cut to condemn attacks on shrine culture and the oppression of artists.
The protest (here, here, here, here, and here) was also aimed at condemning attacks on shrine culture, Bauls, and Fakirs, following the viral incident in which Halim Uddin Akand, a Fakir from Tarakanda in Mymensingh, was forcibly detained and had his hair and beard cut before Eid-ul-Adha. Banners at the event criticised such acts as oppression of cultural practitioners, while artists dressed in white performed Lalon songs under a tree along the Brahmaputra riverside, reflecting Lalon’s humanist tradition.
To sum up, a protest video from Bangladesh is falsely shared as showing atrocities against students for wearing Indian clothes and not keeping beards.